Looking for recommendations of decent laptop with a keyboard similar to old Thinkpads

Hello, I've recently got a new laptop, it is a top-of-the-line Lenovo Thinkpad X270.

This is my second Thinkpad with the "new" keyboard. The "old" Thinkpad keyboards (the non-chicklet ones) were famous for its ergonomics, for people that need a decent keyboard for a lot of typing.

Back when I got my X240, which was my first Thinkpad with the "new" keyboard (the chicklet-style) I was quite a bit annoyed, but I thought that by the time the next couple versions come out, they'd either revert to the old design, or get rid of the problems that plagued the earlier models.

Now, concerning my new X270, I'm very happy with the display, the general ergonomics of the laptop, the touchpad I don't care about, really. The keyboard still is appalling compared to the old Thinkpad, non-chicklet keyboards.

I'm really upset about this, and I'm thinking of sending my laptop back, and looking elsewhere. Could someone maybe suggest a laptop of similar quality, but with a keyboard made for typists and power users, and not something that's supposed to mimic Apple keyboards?

Cheers,--polemon

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Edit: I've also checked the entire line-up of Thinkpads, they all use those horrible chicklet keyboards. So I'm pretty sure this was the last Thinkpad I've gotten, until they change to a better keyboard.

Unfortunately laptop keyboards are the victim of the push toward ever thinner and lighter.

IMO the only really decent chicklet keyboard was on the Macbook Pro, but that has been axed in favor of the really short travel keyboards Apple is using now.

I'm not aware of anything on the market that is like the old Thinkpads. I also loved them and am snobby about my laptop keyboards. I don't know what I'll use next.

The Dell XPS line has a decent enough keyboard. I had a 13" and had no complaints about it, and a 15" is possibly my next laptop. You may want to get your hands on one of those and see if you like it. The Razer Blade Pro is bringing back mechanical keys to laptops, but it's horribly expensive and gamer-ish design. Beyond that I've really got nothing.

Well, I'd imagine, that there is a user base that relies on a decent keyboard on their laptops. I've been using Thinkpads for almost 20 years now, and only since they've switched to this atrocious chiclet keyboard design, they're to me as cheap as a low-end Asus or Acer or what have you.

The old keyboard was very good with gloves. The track point is a must for that too. I don't use my laptops with gloves all the time, but it happens from time to time, and not being able to do that, would drive me quite crazy.

Btw. the "island chiclet" keys are only one of many problems: They have an LED indicator for FnLock, an indicator for speaker mute and microphone mute, but they got rid of the LED indicators for caps lock, scroll lock and num lock... What is the point of that? Also, no more media keys on the arrows, and the upper bar (F-keys) is now a tiny, thin row of keys, with no space between them. Also, the space of the F-row to the number row, is smaller than the space between any other row.

For some reason the Menu key is now replaced with Print Screen - I have normally Compose mapped to the Menu key, that workflow got murdered, too.

Oh, but it has a backlight...

Also, they seem to put these keyboards on laptops now, where it doesn't even make sense at all, the Dell XPS 14" Latitude Rugged Extreme laptop, is about 1 inch thick, but they still have that chiclet keyboard in there. It seems this is becoming the new standard, which infuriates me.

As for mechanical switches: They're not exactly a must for me, as long as the rubber dome springs over membrane keyboards are decent.

I'm pretty happy with my work T440s's keyboard. It's chiclet but I prefer that because the keys are now scalloped (couldn't do that with the old style keycaps) and they don't pop off as easy as the old style keyboards. Maybe try a T-Series. Might have deeper throw than the X-Series (though that wasn't one of your complaints). If you're not happy with the ThinkPad keyboard, I can guarantee you you won't be happy with anything else. They are one of the only laptops that still have full size up and down cursor keys, which is a huge plus for me.

I swear, most laptops these days are designed for people who never write anything longer than a tweet.

Well, the only real alternative, is lugging a keyboard around, which kinda defeats the purpose, I think.

I'm wondering how many generations of shitty laptop keyboards it's gonna take, until they start making decent keyboards again.

Short throw is fine, as long as it's tactile, decently sized, and has features which make sense and are geared towards people typing a lot. Btw. the backlight on the keyboard is not only gimmicky, it's also utter crap: it's unevenly lit. It feels like they've put only two LEDs under there, and it's not even symmetrical, either. The right side is brighter than the left, the top is brighter than the bottom, and the backlight fades considerably towards the edges, which makes the entire thing look like a cheapo 299 Euros laptop. Good thing it can be switched off.

It seems the Getac laptops are the last of that breed, but they're prohibitively expensive, and weigh a ton.

Btw. the touchpad of the Thinkpads is crap too, but it's another story entirely. They could've made the touchpad smaller and give us another row of keys, as far as I'm concerned.

If you want the old, pre-chiclet Thinkpad keyboard, you're going to have to stick with an old, pre-chiclet Thinkpad.

We've had a lot of conversations with Lenovo reps over the years on how they got the keyboard feel of the newer chiclet design to be just as good as the old keyboards (note that "feel" and "design" are clearly not the same thing). I'd guess the Thinkpad P-series will probably have the nicest ones.

As far as backlighting goes, they'd have to do a significantly different design if you want it to be truly even. Probably why pre-backlighting, they insisted on the "Thinklight" mounted above the LCD instead of backlighting.

And in this age where Macbook Pro's and everything else have bigger and bigger touchpads, I don't think you're going to see a smaller touchpad in anything. You're the outlier as far as the market is concerned.

I know I'm the outliner, but I also know, that I'm not the only one outliner.

The Thinkpads were /for/ the outliners. People that don't care so much about how a laptop looks, but more about how it is to type on. People that use their keyboards not only for typing letters, but also programming and using a shell.

The Thinklight was gimmicky too, but to be honest, it was a simple solution to a very simple problem: not being able to see the keyboard. People who type a lot don't need to see the keyboards at all, but sometimes it's a tiny bit more convenient. Having a tiny floor lamp in your laptop lid was actually pretty convenient for looking at other things in the dark.

I just bought a new battery for my 2012 Lenovo ThinkPad x 230. Is that the new style op dislikes, or old style? The NEW models STILL offer a 2.5 GHz i5, same as my 5 year-old model. I like the backlit keyboard, track pad not so much.

I just bought a new battery for my 2012 Lenovo ThinkPad x 230. Is that the new style op dislikes, or old style?

Funny that you bring that up, the X230 is the first X-series ThinkPad to introduce the new style keyboard, actually.

Quote:

The NEW models STILL offer a 2.5 GHz i5, same as my 5 year-old model. I like the backlit keyboard, track pad not so much.

The megahertz may sound the same, but there have been MASSIVE improvements in energy efficiency, and fairly significant increases in IPC since 2012, so if you're just looking at the number, it may sound the same, but in actual use, you'll get several hours more battery life and quite a bit more performance out of a modern laptop. There's also been a several times over increase in performance for IGPs, but that doesn't affect many people, especially office productivity users. Finally, a modern CPU will turbo to much higher, which improves bursty workloads (e.g. opening/reopening apps when they've been unloaded from RAM.).

The megahertz may sound the same, but there have been MASSIVE improvements in energy efficiency, and fairly significant increases in IPC since 2012, so if you're just looking at the number, it may sound the same, but in actual use, you'll get several hours more battery life and quite a bit more performance out of a modern laptop.

++;

Going from something like an i7-640LM (2.13ghz base/2.93ghz turbo) to the i7-6600U (2.6ghz base/3.4ghz turbo) from my last upgrade was a significant performance increase, and something like a 50% increase in battery life despite similar battery capacity.

But is cpu energy efficiency a large part of the actual battery usage, at least compared to screen? I always thought the screen was by far the biggest threat to battery life and that other factors were much further down the list of battery usage. So even with improved cpu energy use, its still a relatively small factor - right?.

Screen is the biggest consumer of battery, but the CPU plays a large role too. Just look at the numbers. If you compare an X230 with 63Wh battery and HD screen (1366x720) with an X270 with 46Wh battery and FHD screen (1920x1080):

This is their test that is the least battery intensive, so it demonstrates really well the power savings that Intel has managed to squeeze out when the CPU is idle. With a smaller battery, the newer laptop lasts almost twice as long. In notebookcheck's most intensive test, at full load with max brightness, the X270 still lasts longer (although the difference is probably within the margin of error), which is impressive considering it has a 30% smaller battery and screen resolution that's 2X higher (higher resolution means brighter backlight is needed, so you would expect lower batttery life).

FWIW, it's also more than screen brightness, it's screen quality as well-- contrast ratio, response time, and yes, resolution as well. The screen on the old i7-640LM laptop (an HP Elitebook 2540p) was so awful I couldn't operate it at minimum brightness without tanking the already-terrible contrast ratio, whereas the X260 I have has a significantly better screen that is much more usable at low brightness levels.